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The great bard ... on BBC
WHAT'S INCREDIBLE about this week's Great Briton on BBC is that, apart from a whole body of works, that includes tragedies, comedies and poems, is the innumerable number of words (1700 to be exact) he has coined in the English language — courtship, frugal, negotiate to name a few.
The life and times of William Shakespeare, so vividly captured and expressively narrated by Fiona Shaw for the next segment of "Great Britons" will be on air on July 12 (tomorrow) 19.40 and July 13, 02.40; 14.40; 23.40 on BBC.
Shakespeare's perfect understanding at once, of the fine texture of the English language and the human psyche enabled him to create eternal heroes and heroines in literature. Fiona Shaw highlights these aspects in an impressive way, as she traces the early life of the playwright in Stratford, follows him to London, where his skills on stage as an actor and off it as a writer were honed to perfection and discusses his disillusionment towards the end, and his everlasting popularity.
Little is known about his childhood, says Fiona as she likens it to a torn map — you can see it but the details are missing. Such striking similes and metaphors in the narration make the feature even more interesting.
Till 1592, when he was documented as an established playwright, the facts that we know about his life are indeed sketchy.
The presentation is sprinkled with well-known quotations from Shakespeare's plays. The man was a diehard romantic — no wonder he eulogised love and adventure to a very great extent. The public loved him for his intense stories.
When Fiona says "Romeo and Juliet" will always be synonymous with love and that it was Shakespeare who taught us how to love, you realise the profundity of her statement. No other writer could have written so passionately about love.
Suddenly you are shown clippings from the film with Leonardo Di Caprio playing the tragic lover. In fact such inserts from "Richard III", "King Lear", "Hamlet", "Macbeth" and so on make a telling impact. The documentary shows the stage and the audience of the Shakespearean era and surprisingly it's more like a modern day pop concert scene — a mix of sophistication and vulgarity, as Fiona Shaw rightly puts it.
The man knew the human mind too well. That's why his stories are timeless. And you have Hamlet representing the anxieties of the 20th century.
The docu-feature simultaneously talks about the monarchy then, the plague, the way of life and about other writers such as Marlowe and Ben Jonson, thereby giving the viewer an insight into the literary, social and political scenario of the time. His works written in a world of political intrigue did not get him into trouble because he possessed the ingenuity to clothe his ideas in excellent metaphors.
This greatest storyteller of all time had the acumen to know that sex and violence would always sell. That is one reason why he was able to produce one hit after another and also be an inspiration for the oppressed all over the world. He should fill the bill.
MALATHI RANGARAJAN
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